WHY THE FACIAL PROFILE BECAME A SOURCE OF COMPLEXES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

In the 21st century, the side profile of the face has become one of the main sources of dissatisfaction with appearance. As The Independent (2025) notes, a sculpted, defined jawline has turned into the "new holy grail of beauty" thanks to social media, video calls, and filters. The main reason is the so-called "hidden epidemic of small jaws." In the book Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic by Sandra Kahn and Paul Ehrlich (2018) and in a Stanford University review published in BioScience (2020), it is shown that over the last 150 years human jaws have shrunk by 10–15% due to soft ultra-processed food, mouth breathing, and poor posture. As a result, the lower jaw moves backward, creating a "recessed" or "sloping" profile and often a double chin. The Guardian (2025) confirms: the modern diet, especially the trend of feeding children soft foods and the widespread shift to ultra-processed products, disrupts the natural development of the face in children and teenagers. In the past, people rarely noticed their side profile. Today it is constantly compared to the perfect ideal seen on phone screens every day.